Mercy is a Curse
by fadeoutra
Summary: Fearing that Kilgrave's death would only be an added weight on her conscience, Jessica chooses to take away his powers instead of his life. But will her decision to take the moral high ground satisfy her desire to see him suffer the consequences?
1. Pyrrhic Victory

Clutched tightly in Jessica's right hand was the man who'd made her life the very mirror of hell itself, and he looked down at her with more fear in his bulging eyes than she'd ever thought him capable of. Her fingers acted as a vise around his jaw, locking it shut, preventing him from speaking, and her nails dug deeply into the skin of his cheeks. She held him above her with such strength that the tips of his polished shoes barely touched the ground. Paralyzed by terror, he dangled limply in her grip. His life was literally held in the palm of her hand.

Jessica's lips pulled back from her teeth into a scowl and she spoke his favorite command, the one that sickened her most. "Smile."

Then she reached up with her other hand—

—and stabbed a syringe deep into the muscle of his neck. Kilgrave emitted a small noise of surprise through his nose, but it quickly grew into what he could muster of an agonized wail after the golden-hued substance was injected into him. Almost immediately, the capillaries in his neck and face turned a visible shade of purple. The color blossomed outward from the injection site, and then it slowly changed into the same bright yellow as the fluid that was pumped into him. Jessica tossed the syringe to the ground as Kilgrave's hands reached up to claw at her arm, her vise grip still muffling his desperate shrieks. The display made Jessica's eyes squint in disgust. Even as his skin grew hot beneath her fingers, she fought the urge to toss him away. She had to make sure this worked.

Then, and very abruptly, he went silent. In the same instance that the strange color in his face disappeared, Kilgrave's eyes rolled into the back of his head and every muscle in his body went slack. Jessica held his dead weight for only a few seconds before she finally dropped him. He crumpled until his back hit the hard ground. There was silence, and then there was a low drone of voices behind her. The crowd of people Kilgrave had gathered to be his countermeasure against her now murmured among themselves in confusion, undoubtedly wondering why they'd been trying to murder each other only minutes ago. They'd been freed from his control.

In this brief moment of peace, Jessica's eyes lifted and locked with her sister's. From across the small distance they gazed at each other, neither speaking, neither moving. A shared somber expression meant they both knew this was a small victory, one gained only after suffering unspeakable loss. One might've considered it a Pyrrhic victory. When considering the toll on Jessica's psyche, it almost certainly was one.

And yet, she was still alive. They both were. Trish offered a small smile, but Jessica couldn't return it. Her body still tingled with an adrenaline that was born from the raw power granted to either take a life or leave it. Kilgrave had been entirely at her mercy. All it would've taken was a single second, and he'd have been dead at her feet. The fingers of her right hand twitched. In the moment of it, that power had exhilarated her. Now it made her sick. She shook out the hand that had held him, as if the act could rid her of the adrenaline, but it did nothing.

"Is he still alive?" Trish asked when she came close enough to whisper.

"Yes," Jessica replied with a hint of disappointment, despite herself.

"I didn't see you check."

"Trust me, he's too stubborn to die like this. I'd have to crack his neck to really put him six feet under."

Trish carefully collected the discarded syringe, minding the needle. "Well, we need to get moving." She glanced around the dock. "If there's any chance he still has his powers, we can't let him wake up around all these people."

Jessica took a moment to look back at Kilgrave's most recent victims of persuasion. Workers, families, friends and lovers, elderly and minors, innocent civilians of all kinds now tended to the wounds they'd inflicted upon each other. She recognized the misery upon each of their faces. When her eyes swept across the scene, she saw something that made her breath catch. Lying in the pool of light from a tall lamp near the edge of the dock was a motionless body. Blood glinted faintly in the fluorescence. A familiar feeling tightened her chest.

"Jess," Trish urged, snapping her attention back to the man responsible for all this. Jessica couldn't help but note how peaceful Kilgrave looked lying there, his visage far too undisturbed in the aftermath of all the atrocities he'd committed, and an urge to bury the toe of her boot deep into his ribs nearly overcame her. Instead, she picked him up and tossed him over her shoulders like a man-sized rag doll. He would pay the price another way.

"Somebody call an ambulance!" Jess called out to the puzzled crowd, hoping they'd distract themselves with their own injuries rather than wonder where she was taking an unconscious man, and Trish followed her as they hurried back to the building they'd come through.

* * *

"We don't have anywhere else to put him," Trish argued, punching in the reactivation code for her front door's security system once Jessica had finished stepping through with Kilgrave still slumped across her shoulders.

The hermetically sealed interrogation room they'd rigged had since been rendered useless by the separate sabotages of both Hogarth and Simpson, leaving them with no real options for a place to keep their prisoner. Jessica frowned and adjusted Kilgrave's weight. Her ribs, still not yet fully healed, were beginning to hurt from carrying him all this way.

"Yeah, I know that. But what are we gonna do with him here? I mean, can we at least use your panic room or something?"

"No, it only locks from the inside. I had to break the door to my gym, so we can't use that, either."

Jessica raised an inquisitive brow at that last part.

"Simpson," Trish answered plainly, and Jessica understood.

"Officer Jackass making a mess everywhere he goes, huh?"

"I don't want to talk about him. Look, just put Kilgrave in the bathroom for now."

Jessica scoffed. "You think he can't shout commands from in there?"

"There's a pretty good chance the serum worked. If not, I don't know, just knock him out again."

Despite the worryingly flimsy nature of this plan, Jess headed down the apartment's hallway. "From someone who likes to have a plan, this isn't a very good plan."

"We didn't have much time to come up with one," Trish called back to her.

Fortunately, the bathroom of this lavish dwelling had a generous amount of space, so much that when Jessica bent down and dropped Kilgrave's limp body into the center with a thud, his splayed limbs didn't touch a single thing. For a moment she stared down at him. She watched his chest rise and fall with even breaths, and she could see the vein in his neck throb with the slow rhythm of his pulse. He looked out of place lying on the tiled floor in his expensive charcoal suit and plum tie. Even in his least threatening state, the sight of him flooded Jessica with a sense of overwhelming fatigue, and she wondered how much longer this man would infest every aspect of her life like a goddamned plague. Wearily, she stepped over him to the stainless steel sink, turned the knob for cold water, and splashed a handful onto her face.

The reality of the situation had begun to set in. For the fourth time in recent memory, she had captured her own personal nightmare, her rapist and her attempted murderer, the sole reason behind all the trauma she'd sustained over the last eighteen months, and whether or not he remained dangerous was yet to be known. Jessica gripped the sink's rim with both hands and leaned her weight against it. Under her breath she murmured the street names of her childhood, and she ignored her own reflection in the mirror. Birch Street. Higgins Drive. Cobalt Lane. She spoke it, and then repeated it. When she finished, the only sound in the room was the gentle plink of water that dripped from her chin into the sink. It was a rhythm that did not calm her. The cold water hadn't helped either, nor did the recital of her mantra, and as impossible as it was, she thought she heard the beating of Kilgrave's heart in her ears. It must've been her own. She stiffened when she realized this room had quickly taken on a suffocating quality, like it was cutting her off from the rest of the world. Hurriedly, she dried her face and left, but not before yanking the door's handle off on the bathroom side.

Back in the kitchen, Trish was beginning to explain her idea to bar the bathroom door with a chair, but was cut off when Jessica held up the detached handle.

"Really?" sighed Trish. "You know, between you and Simpson, I won't have much of an apartment anymore."

"Poor you." Jessica tossed the handle into a corner and slung her leather jacket across a chair. "I'm sure you could afford half the studios in Manhattan. You'll be fine." She stood on her toes to rummage through the kitchen cabinets.

Trish let the topic drop, and she stared down the hallway. "Let's just assume for a minute that the cure worked and his powers are gone for good. What do we do with him next?"

There was a brief clinking of glass before Jessica found the bottle of whiskey she wanted. "We're putting him behind bars for life. I called Hogarth about the guy in that penthouse, remember? The place Kilgrave was keeping Albert in. As long as that guy's alive, he can serve as a witness to everything Kilgrave forced his dear, old dad to do." She took a swig straight from the bottle. "Plus, that little makeshift lab is still there. I'm sure Kilgrave's prints are all over it. We got him, Trish. There's no way a judge can turn down this kind of evidence."

Trish leaned against the counter with her arms crossed. "What if it's not enough? Or what if it didn't even work, and he still has his powers?" She fell silent for a long moment, still staring into the middle distance of her own hallway. When she spoke again, her voice was softer. "Maybe we should've finished it back there on the docks."

"No," Jessica countered, and she set her bottle back on the counter with a hard thud. "Don't give me that 'eye for an eye' crap. That's Simpson putting ideas in your head."

Trish whirled on her. "Simpson doesn't tell me what to think, goddammit! My thoughts are my own, and I just hate seeing you obsess over something that's already damaged your life enough. We weren't able to save Hope, and she's gone now, but you keep letting this consume you!"

"We are so close, Trish. We're so close to putting him away for good."

"There's too much that we're still uncertain of! What if the antidote works, but it doesn't last, and he breaks himself out of prison? Jess, what if he comes after us again?"

There was a desperation in Trish's eyes that forced Jessica to look away. Several seconds of tense silence passed between them. "I'm not a murderer," Jessica finally said, and she spoke the words with a softness, as if she was the only person in the room.

"I know," Trish agreed quietly, apologetically. She now wrung her hands in thought. "I'm not saying you are. I'm just wondering if we made the right choice."

Jessica meant to answer with a heavy sigh, but it instead became a gasp of pain. Grimacing, she lifted her shirt to examine her own cellophane-wrapped rib cage. Trish hurried around the counter.

"It's fine, I got it." Jessica attempted to wave her sister off, but that never worked. She winced when Trish delicately pressed the bruised skin underneath the cellophane.

"I don't think they're cracked anymore," Trish observed. Her careful fingers unwrapped the material from around Jessica's lower torso. "You shouldn't need another binding. Do you want some painkillers?"

Jessica waved her bottle to slosh the whiskey inside. "This is all the medicine I'll need, thanks." Trish, not surprised, discarded the cellophane into the kitchen's trash bin while Jessica crossed the apartment to the glass doors that separated the sitting room from the balcony, where she drank deeply from her bottle and peered, her eyes achingly tired, into the night.

Outside, it was every bit the glittering city most people dreamed of. The moon's white light reflected off of nearly every window of every building in midtown. The ones that weren't touched by moonlight were washed a soft yellow by the streetlamps down below. It was a gorgeous, glittering city, but only on its surface. Even with the picturesque view, the revolting stench of it all still lingered in Jessica's senses. New York City was disgusting, as was everyone who lived in it— including herself. She'd decided so long ago. There did exist exceptions to that rule, but she could count those few souls on one hand. Everyone else was filled with the same black, oozing shit she'd once imagined herself overflowing with. One more burning mouthful of whiskey went down, and she wondered if caring about keeping this city safe, about getting Kilgrave off the streets, was even worth it. Her head swam. For a second, the choice seemed easy. Then the fabric of the sofa behind her rustled lightly as Trish took a seat on it.

"What would you have done?" Jessica abruptly asked, turning to face Trish, and her clipped tone betrayed any attempt at apathy. "Back there on the docks, I mean. Would you have killed him? Ended it all right there?"

The stunned look she earned made her almost regret asking, but Trish's face soon softened into consideration. She gazed back at Jessica for what felt like a long time. Then, she lowered her head and pondered in even longer silence, until finally, and with conviction, she answered, "I would've done what you did."

An unexpected relief made Jessica feel lighter, like a tiny fraction of weight had been lifted from her. Like it was a tiny bit easier to breathe.

"And I think that's enough with the heavy talk for tonight," Trish continued. "You have got to get some sleep, Jess. You look exhausted."

Jessica rubbed her own temple with her thumb. Insomnia had been a lingering thorn in her mind ever since the night of Reva, but recent events had made it noticeably worse. She hadn't slept more than a few hours each night for the past few weeks. Still, she protested. "I can't sleep until I know for sure that Kilgrave is powerless. I won't risk leaving you with him."

"Don't you at least want a clear head when you confront him again? Look, you won't be leaving me. I need sleep, too. We can both stay in my bedroom tonight." Trish gave a crooked smile. "Just pretend it's an old-fashioned slumber party."

Jessica snorted at her joke, but the growing ache behind her eyes meant Trish was right. Tonight had taken a huge toll on them, both physically and mentally, and there was no sense in being anything less than alert when Kilgrave woke back up. Dealing with him was going to be a pain in the ass, with or without mind control.

"Fine, whatever," she relented, jerking her head toward the bedroom. "Lead the way."

The hands of the analog alarm clock on Trish's nightstand pointed to 12:41 AM. Jessica kicked her boots haphazardly into the room, partly to provoke Trish, and when she earned a look of disapproval, Jessica hid her smirk beneath the mouth of her whiskey bottle. She fell into her usual bedtime routine by unbuttoning her jeans, but stopped upon realizing that she may need to go sprinting after Kilgrave if anything were to happen. Trish seemed to have the same thought. They both collapsed onto the queen-sized bed, fully clothed.

"This is the most uncomfortably comfortable bed I have ever been on," Jessica muttered.

Trish laughed. "What does that even mean?"

"It feels like I'm gonna sink in and never return." The thought that such a fate might not be so bad remained unspoken.

"It's called a comforter. It's supposed to feel nice."

"Yeah, yeah. So, here's our plan." Jessica set her whiskey down on the floor next to her side of the bed and used her free hands for emphasis. "When Kilgrave wakes up bitching and moaning— which, he will— I'm gonna need you to get out of his sight. Like, entirely. Hide in a corner somewhere while I deal with him, because if he sees you, the first thing he's gonna do is try to control you."

"But we'll need to test his powers to see if they even still work. We can't test them on you, you were already immune."

"Yeah, but—"

"Jess," Trish interrupted gently, shifting her weight to lean on an elbow. "you can't protect me from everything. It's better to do the test on me than on someone who was never involved. Besides, I know you won't let me get hurt."

"If he makes you attack me, I'm gonna be the one hurting you." Jessica's voice was bitter. It hadn't even happened yet, but she already resented Kilgrave for the mere possibility.

Trish didn't seem so troubled. "I trust you. And even if I didn't, it still has to be me. We just can't risk testing it on other people."

"Fine. But I still want you to stay hidden when he wakes up. Let me deal with him a little, first."

"I can do that."

Satisfied, Jessica rolled onto her stomach. "Goodnight."

"Sleep tight," Trish yawned, facing away from her and shutting off the bedside light.

The night slowly passed, and while Trish's breathing eased into the steady rhythm of deep sleep, Jessica didn't fair so well. She stared through the darkness at the nearby wall with unblinking eyes. She stared, because every time she closed her eyes, she saw the mangled, armless torso of Albert Thompson. The memory of him had been seared onto her mind like a scar from a branding iron, much like the memory of Reva Connors. In graphic detail she remembered the way he laid, the way his blood had stained the carpet beneath him a dark, sticky crimson, and she remembered the streaks of it he'd left smeared across the wall. She remembered the way his eyes had snapped open, and how he'd begged her to do what he couldn't.

"There, on the table," he'd gasped at her. "a cure for the virus inside him. All my enhancements that failed— the antibodies that were left— stop him first, and then you can..."

Jessica remembered the way he'd stopped mid sentence, how the life had drained from his eyes and his final breath hissed from his lungs. Back then, standing over his newly dead corpse, she'd understood that the tiny vial of golden liquid had a chance of ridding Kilgrave of his powers for good. Now, as her mind searched for the refuge of sleep, she tried to remember the moment she'd chosen to take that chance over taking his life.

She couldn't remember it.


	2. Fantasy Corpse

Kilgrave's return to consciousness was gradual, sluggish, and tedious, like the strain of dragging one's feet through a mire, only the mire of his mind was in such a state of chaos that it disoriented him as much as it suppressed him. His thoughts were in complete disarray, and though he fought his way toward any shred of clarity, it left him dazed, and, for the time being, he couldn't conceive of what had happened to him, or how, or why. The farther he pushed into consciousness, the more aware he became of a headache that throbbed just behind his eyes. When a groan forced its way out of him, it took a moment for him to recognize the sound as his own. Reflexively, he rolled from his back onto his side, and a cool, smooth surface pressed against his hot cheek. The feeling of it soothed him. A shiver went through him then, prying away what little attention he could manage from the warmth in his face.

He pressed a palm against his forehead. The contact prompted a sudden moment of lucidity— he had a fever. It explained the disorientation, as well as the full-body chills that made his shoulders tense and his ribs ache with each tremor. It also raised several new concerns, none of which he could even begin to examine in his current state, and when he finally chanced a peek above him to check his surroundings, he only found that there wasn't enough light to distinguish anything beyond the vague outline of a counter. It was all he could do to curl into himself as much as the unforgiving fabric of his suit would allow and sift through the mire of his own mind.

This wasn't the same experience he'd come to associate with sufentanil. Though that drug typically left him with a splitting headache, it didn't quite incapacitate him to this extent. In fact, these chills and fever only called to mind the few times in his life he'd been sick with the flu. The helplessness he now felt, lying there on the floor with not a single inkling of what to do, particularly evoked memories of the time he'd fallen terribly ill as a child. Back then, only recently abandoned, he hadn't known what he'd become sick with, or how to cure it, or how to ease the symptoms, and when he'd sought help, he hadn't known what to command of anyone for it. He'd cried himself to sleep on those nights so long ago.

Childhood was something he very rarely chose to recall, so the unbidden memory disturbed him, and as his mind swam, the unsettling familiarity of these circumstances made itself more and more apparent. It unearthed emotions he thought had been long since buried and forgotten.

It made him think of the times in those early years when he'd wished for his parents.

Kilgrave physically recoiled from the thought by wrenching fistfuls of his own hair to the point of pain. Muddled as his head was, he refused to fall down that rabbit hole, and with tremendous concentration he banished all thoughts of his parents and forced himself into his usual place of mental comfort. That place was with Jessica. Not the Jessica who wanted him dead— no, never her— but the Jessica he used to spend all his time with, the one who twirled in summery sundresses and had a smile that could brighten the most dreary of days. He once had a substantial collection of photos that captured her brilliant smile, though the smart phone he'd collected them on had long been destroyed by that bus accident. God, he missed those pictures. He missed her smile. For a moment, he allowed himself to fall entirely into the comfort of her. He imagined that she was with him, here in this strange, pitch black place, and that she was taking care of him. For a moment, there was only her.

"She's a corpse, you know," came her familiar voice, but only in the confines of his own head. Another shudder rolled through him. His fever must be higher than he'd thought for his imaginary Jessica to say anything so scornful. "I mean, you might as well consider her dead and buried. She died the day I walked away from you. I'm never going to be like that again."

"I know, but I don't remember why," Kilgrave murmured to his own fantasy. When he lifted his head from his own hands, he pictured her there, sitting next to him, staring down at him. He then pictured her making that face he'd come to know so well, the one with her eyes narrowed and a single eyebrow incredulously raised.

"I thought you'd smiled at me," he elaborated, for he'd finally remembered that part. He remembered Jessica's smile on the docks.

"Yeah, but that wasn't all I did. What happened next?" The way he imagined her forehead to crease in expectation made him think harder.

"...I wanted you to tell me you love me."

"And?" Jessica impatiently urged.

But she didn't stay any longer. The full recollection of that night's events made the figment of Jessica vanish from Kilgrave's mind, and alongside that came the reality, crashing down on him with full force, that he was utterly alone, and that the real Jessica would never desire him again.

She'd spoken the words he'd longed for most— but she'd looked past him to say it. The dull pain in his jaw reminded him of what had happened next and, unwillingly, he recalled the way her eyes had transfixed him with an unbridled hatred, and how they'd struck a panic in him unlike anything he'd ever felt before. His shoulders now quaked from more than just the fever chills. Seeking solace, desperate to regain the comfort he'd found only moments ago, he told himself that hate and love were separated by nothing more than a thin line. Easily crossed, easily blurred. That's what his experiences with Jessica had taught him. Even now, thoughts of her made his heart ache with one and his eyes sting with the other. This bleak rumination had him curling back into himself, arms wrapping around his chest like the shudders might just pull him apart otherwise, and after some time, just as gradually as he had awoken, he slipped back into a deep, dreamless slumber.

The fever dissipated as he slept. Kilgrave woke to a clear head, and he instantly regretted how poorly he'd sorted his emotions during the haze of last night. With lucidity came an embarrassment on his own behalf, and with that came an indignation that pushed any remnants of melancholy over Jessica to the very back of his mind. He finally understood, after opening his eyes to the thin band of light that poured in from underneath the door, that he'd been dumped here like a dog in a kennel. The realization was made worse when he craned his neck to see that his latest prison was somebody's bathroom. He'd been misled— again. The familiar feeling of betrayal returned like an old companion come to greet him once more and remind him of just how insignificant he was in the eyes of the only person he'd ever loved. He feared this feeling would eventually nest a home in him.

The chills of last night had left behind a deep ache in his muscles, and Kilgrave groaned as he sat up on the floor and attempted to stretch his back, where the pain had settled most prominently. He couldn't stop the incident on the docks from replaying in his head, not when his clothes still carried the faint scent of the harbor. He'd gotten too close, too trusting, too naive, and Jessica had grabbed him. She'd had him right where she'd been wanted him all this time— but she hadn't killed him. Trapped as he was, he was still breathing, and knowing this had been Jessica's choice for him made breathing that much easier.

It wasn't just a soreness in his muscles that reminded him of the long night. The fabric of his dress shirt, still damp with sweat, clung to his skin beneath his jacket and vest, making him grimace as he rose to stand. One hand gripped the counter for support and the other slid along the wall until it hit a light switch. He had to admit, once he'd blinked the spacious porcelain-tiled room into view, that it was more posh than he'd first assumed. It placated him, even if only slightly. At least his feet weren't constantly submerged in three inches of cold water.

After using the toilet to his own great relief, he checked his reflection in the mirror. The disaster that met his stare was barely recognizable. With his hair wildly disheveled, tired eyes framed by dark circles, cheeks faintly reddened above the stubble line, and jaw speckled with hideous purple bruises, his immediate concern was whether or not Jessica would be able to take him seriously. Then again, he reminded himself, she never could, not even when he looked his very finest. He was nevertheless loath to leave himself looking so unpresentable. With a sudden gratitude for his surroundings, he used the sink to wash the sweat from his face, and to tame his hair to the best of his ability. His tie had gone askew during the night, so he fixed that. The square of fabric had fallen from his suit's front pocket, so he fixed that, as well. He flattened his collar, straightened his cuffs, and tugged his suit jacket until it hung over his frame just right.

And then he stared, motionless, at his own reflection. He stared at the bruises on his face, knowing it had been Jessica who'd put them there. He stared until he realized he'd been grinding his teeth the entire time.

Wherever he'd ended up, she couldn't be far.

Kilgrave reached for the door's handle, or rather, he tried to, until his hand grabbed air where the handle should've been. Someone had ripped it off. So he pounded his fist against the door and filled his lungs to capacity.

**"JESSICAAA!"**


	3. Silver Tongue on the Chopping Block

Jessica dreamed that night of Luke. It was unusual, and it was unexpected, because normally her dreams were nightmares, and they were of dark hallways, or of whispers in her ears, or of a familiar and terrible silhouette waiting at the end of a bed. Sometimes they were of Reva, or more recently, of Ruben. Her dreams were things she often tried to avoid by drinking herself into a hopefully dreamless sleep. But tonight, she dreamed of Luke, and it was peaceful. She walked with him down a sunlit sidewalk in Hell's Kitchen, keeping pace just far enough behind that she could take in the sight of his broad shoulders and the back of his familiar jacket. Everything felt like slow motion, but that only made things seem more serene. She almost thought she could see the sunlight itself coming down in slow shimmers, dusting everything in slight gold, highlighting the very details of him. They walked together in silence. Luke didn't look back at her. Jessica didn't mind. It was enough to see him here, with her, in good health. Alive. It was more than she could've asked for.

Someone calling her name in the distance made her hesitate on the sidewalk, but she was reluctant to look away from Luke, and her body only half-turned to the voice. Luke's pace didn't slow, and he didn't look back. Jessica watched him go on without her.

The second shouting of her name was much more jarring. The unmistakable voice nearly overwhelmed her with dread before she'd even opened her eyes, and it was this panic more than anything that jolted her awake and sprang her to her feet. The smooth floor almost sent her crashing down in her socks, but she caught herself on the edge of the bed, and in doing so also caught the alarmed eyes of Trish, who had flown to her knees on top of the sheets. It only took that one shared look for them to remember the plan they'd made the night before. Trish hopped to the floor and hurried through the divider to hide elsewhere in the apartment. Jessica stayed by the bed and sucked in deep breaths to steady her racing heart.

Kilgrave's hollering did not make for a pleasant wake-up call. From where she stood near the window, Jessica could see that the sun had only just begun to rise. It sent gray light through the foggy morning and meant she'd only gotten a few hours of sleep. The fitful night had put a dull ache in her head, but it was nothing she hadn't coped with before. Running on fumes was almost her daily routine. The tank top she wore had twisted around her during the night, as had her jeans, so she adjusted those. She collected her boots and slid them back on, slowly, taking her time with each one as she mentally recited the streets of her childhood to tune out Kilgrave's incessant racket from down the hall, and once she was sure her pulse had calmed as much as it was going to, she made her way to the bathroom door.

It was time to see whether or not the devil still had his silver tongue.

Jessica kicked the door open, sending it flying inward on its hinges, and it swung into the wall with a bang. Kilgrave stood glowering at her from just out of its reach. Lucky bastard.

"Good morning, Kevin," she taunted him in her most unpleasant tone.

Kilgrave skipped the banter. "You tricked me."

"Yeah, no shit." Jessica afforded his appearance a cursory glance, but her attention was caught by the very noticeable dark bruises along his jawline and in his cheeks, right where she'd gripped him firmly with one hand on the docks. Satisfaction flickered across her face.

But Kilgrave, already distracted, stared past her to appraise the rest of the apartment's interior. "This is much nicer than your place. Is it Patsy's? It must be, you don't have any other friends." The pointedly snide remark was muttered like all his insults— a statement of superficial fact. It was all she could do to stop herself from putting him through the wall right here and now. When he attempted to step around her, she shadowed him, blocking his path.

"Oh, stop it." Kilgrave sounded like an adult scolding a petulant child. "Don't delude yourself into thinking you can keep me here forever. Be reasonable." He shot a judgmental glance at the bathroom behind him, then another into the hall behind Jessica. "Why here, of all places, anyway? No more watery chambers for me?"

"We decided you weren't worth all that effort a second time. But now that I think about it, I probably should've filled the tub with ice water and dumped you into that, for good measure."

"I'm thankful you didn't." Kilgrave stepped forward and leaned in close with that half smirk Jessica despised. "And I'm very thankful you didn't kill me. Your actions are vastly different from your words, Jessica Jones."

Nothing set her off the way his insinuations did. She grabbed him by the lapels of his suit jacket with both hands, pulled him from the doorway, and slammed him hard against the wall to her side. Incensed, he growled at the impact rather than grunted. Jessica gripped the suit's fabric tightly in her fists to refrain from slugging him.

"Trust me when I say I'd rather see you floating lifeless down the Hudson River." The stench of overnight sweat coming off him wrinkled her nose. "But you're alive for a reason, and it isn't the one you keep thinking it is, you psychotic piece of shit. You still have hell to pay."

Kilgrave's hands snatched both her wrists, and she instinctively flinched. "Make me pay?" he bellowed down at her, no longer bothering with the calm facade. "What is there you could possibly do, if not kill me? Why even play this pointless game anymore? If you had just let me leave on that yacht, I'd be long gone by now and you'd never have to see me again!"

Jessica didn't loosen her grip. "Letting you leave would've meant letting you continue ruining the lives of people all over the world."

"Oh, please. Unbelievable. Still playing the hero?" Abruptly his expression softened, contrasting the contemptuous tone of his voice as his eyes dropped down to where he held her wrists. She followed his gaze in time to watch his hands caress the skin of her bare arms, and she jerked away, satisfying Kilgrave by freeing him from her own grasp. He leaned in once more, but she was no longer looking at him. "It's over, Jessica. I've given up on you; you have no Hope left. Let me leave."

Jessica had angled her head away from him, and she deliberated on whether she should explain the situation or simply demonstrate, especially when she didn't know yet if the antiviral drug had even worked. Kilgrave watched her expectantly, still standing much too close, purposely smothering her with his proximity, and he unwittingly hastened her decision. They might as well deal with the biggest obstacle as soon as possible.

"Come here, Trish," she called down the hall. "Let's get it over with."

As if at the drop of a dime, Kilgrave all at once thrilled with interest. He was a glutton for opportunity, and Jessica knew it, though the resentment she harbored for it couldn't distract her for long. Her entire body went rigid when Trish cautiously stepped into view at the end of the hall.

"PATSY!" Kilgrave immediately called out, demanding Trish's attention in a voice that was resonant with all the authority he believed himself to have. Jessica grabbed onto his arm to prevent him from bolting for the door, but, with immense effort, she restrained herself from interfering any further. This is what they'd wanted, after all.

"Get Jessica off me right now and keep her away, do whatever you have to!"

His command saturated the atmosphere with an apprehension so thick it made Jessica's breath catch, and she felt suffocated by the moment itself. Trish waited, terrified, for her own trembling body to respond to the order. The two sisters locked eyes from across the length of the hall.

"I said," Kilgrave impatiently reiterated, enunciating each syllable, "Get rid of her. Now."

The stifling silence that trailed his command was broken only by the thudding of Jessica's own heart in her ears, and she waited, not breathing, not moving, for the very worst to happen. But Trish's body didn't move, either. She didn't twitch a single finger. More than that, and most importantly, her head didn't want to obey. Trish signaled this with a tentative smile, and Jessica, finally releasing the stale air in her lungs, returned that smile. To her, it felt like this was the first time they'd really looked at each other, and really smiled at one another, in far too long.

Their shared moment provoked Kilgrave even further, his eyes darting between them, and this time, his voice boomed off the walls. "Patricia Walker, get Jessica Jones away from me right now!"

Trish shot him an incredulous look for using her full name like a parent's reprimand. Jessica, to her own genuine surprise, actually laughed at the absurdity as she let go of his sleeve, their triumph having lifted her spirits tremendously to the point that she'd become giddy with relief. She turned back to Kilgrave to watch his reaction and found him frozen in place, his eyes wild and jaw hanging slack, his visage utterly stricken with horror. She waited for him to try the command a fourth time but it never came. When his mouth finally closed, she saw his Adam's apple bounce and his throat tense around a hard swallow.

Jessica realized she'd been waiting a long time for him to break like this.

"It's over, Kevin." Her smile had become a cruel one, and her tone was scathing. "Your powers are gone. Do you hear me? Gone! You won't control anyone ever again. All the bullshit you've caused, all the people you've hurt— it's over!"

But when he looked down at her, his expression stunned her, derailing her verbal onslaught despite how much more she had left to say, for it was reminiscent of the way he'd looked last night when she'd held him at death's door.

"How?" Even with that one word, his voice still faltered in the middle.

Jessica had to recollect herself. "Your father's last act of rebellion. He threw together some kind of drug to kill the virus inside you. Don't ask me what it was, I don't fucking know. Something to do with antibodies."

"How?" Kilgrave repeated, more forcefully this time. "I had him working on amplifiers, not a goddamn cure!"

"Speaking as someone who's had you in their head," Jessica spat, "I know what it feels like, and I can tell you that, as long as your stupid commands were being followed, it was possible to get other things done at the same time." Kilgrave looked at her like her head had spun backwards, but she continued. "I'm betting he took the amplifiers that didn't work and cooked them into something else while waiting for whatever you'd ordered to brew. Look, I don't know any of that medical science shit."

"But he wanted me dead! I know he did, he said it to my face! Why would he want me cured?!"

"Maybe he thought you'd be easier to kill if you were powerless." Jessica shifted her stance, irritated. Albert's motivations didn't interest her in the slightest. "All I know is that it worked. That's all that matters."

The muscles in Kilgrave's jaw were visibly taut. "And that's what you did last night at the docks. That's what you did to me." It was unquestionably an accusation, and Jessica bristled.

"You think you're the victim?" she asked with a biting edge.

"No, you're right, I'm not." And then, very swiftly and very suddenly, and all at once, like at the drop of a dime, his demeanor shifted again, and Kilgrave was entirely livid. The mood swing staggered Jessica so much that she drew back when he stepped forward. "Because you're lying. You're deceitful— you're a treacherous, vindictive bitch of a woman— and you've been lying to me this entire time, over and over, making me think I could trust you in the house that I bloody restored for you, all so you could torture me in your godforsaken prison!" He was screaming now, his face flushed red. Jessica refused to avert her eyes, refused to give him that satisfaction, but still he pressed on. "And now you're lying about this because you can't just let me get on with my life, you contemptible failure, you absolute drunken waste, you pitiful, revolting, heartless liar!"

"Keep talking and see what happens," threatened Trish from Jessica's side. She'd approached near the end of Kilgrave's tirade, and he now turned the full force of his wrath onto her.

"Shut your mouth, Patsy," he snarled, "you sanctimonious hypocrite. It's a goddamn shame you didn't save a bullet for your own deranged head."

Jessica rammed her fist into his stomach, deep into the sensitive bundle of nerves just below his sternum, knocking the wind completely from him. He coughed out in pain with what little air remained in his lungs as his legs buckled beneath him and, arms wrapped tight around his middle, head bowed inward, he collapsed to his knees on the floor.

"Give it a rest, you stupid prick." Jessica watched him with cold indifference as he struggled to breathe.

Trish hesitated before touching Jess's arm. "You okay?"

"I don't give a shit what he says."

But Jessica had endured this kind of anger from him more times than she was willing to admit. Denial made one hell of a monster out of Kilgrave. It always had. She knew firsthand, possibly better than anyone else after those many months in his company, just how deeply he was willing to bury himself in it, how far he was willing to let it cut himself off from the entire world. It was a denial steeped to its head in delusion. She recognized it and, usually, she saw it coming, but her defenses were as solid as his words were piercing— for the most part. "He can bitch at me all he wants, it doesn't change a thing," she added. "He's totally powerless."

Still arched over his own knees, Kilgrave shuddered with a sudden retching sound and he swallowed convulsively.

"Don't you dare throw up on my carpet," warned Trish.

Jessica leaned on the opposite wall of the narrow hallway. "Guess I hit him too hard. Oops."

The corners of Trish's mouth twitched upward. "I think you let him off lightly."

Jessica snorted, and Trish quivered with a silent laugh.

It was surreal, the way they could trade casual banter in the presence of the man who'd spent so long turning their days into nightmares, but it was the sudden absence of any and all threat he once posed that now allowed them to finally relax. In no way, shape, or form did he hold any power over them, and it felt like a newfound freedom. Like they'd been freed from unseen shackles and could flaunt their liberation in front of him while he now found himself bound by constraints of a different kind. Above all else, and the primary cause of her own elation, was that Jessica hadn't needed to gain this freedom by taking another life with her own hands. The scales were beginning to find their balance.

And then, gradually, and as it always did, Jessica's smile faded. Reality seeped back into her like a drug in her veins that numbed her to the joy that was never meant to stay. It drained her of everything else and left only the cognizance that there was no battle won, that people had died, that those who needed saving could no longer be saved and that ultimately it all came back to her, just as all things like this seemed to do. She'd been the source, and it was her responsibility to clean up the mess. One mess knelt in the corner of the hall doing his best not to lose the contents of his stomach to the floor, and the other was buried inside her, pushed down low and piled up high. There were a thousand manacles on her wrists and she'd only been freed from a single pair.

When she forced her own reluctant head back into the present she found Trish's eyes searching hers. Jessica simply shook her head and looked away, opting instead to watch Kilgrave's attempt to sit himself upright on the floor. He'd loosened his tie and unbuttoned his shirt's collar, exposing the base of his throat and the sheen of sweat that covered it. His back made a soft thumping sound against the wall and, with one hand, he cradled the spot where she'd struck him.

"You're lying to me," he finally persisted in the guttural tone he reserved for when he was most unhappy. "There's no way you could make my ability just disappear like that. My backstabbing father made an immunization for her," he jerked his head at Trish, "all so you could mislead me with this little act of yours. I'm not buying it. I won't keep falling for the same bullshit." Even from his position on the floor, he sought to stare her down, and Jessica met his furious gaze down the length of her nose. His frame shook with each labored breath. She stood still and impassive as stone.

It was she who finally broke the silence. "Guess I'll just have to convince you." Jessica rounded on her heels and marched toward the kitchen to grab her leather jacket. Kilgrave's obstinacy wasn't something she felt like tolerating this morning. Not when she had so much else to focus on, like getting the wheels turning on his eventual incarceration. And besides, life might be easier for all three of them if she could just force-feed him the truth. "Come on, Kevin. Let's go for a stroll."

Kilgrave stared after her, blinking, arched brows creasing his forehead. He still hadn't moved from his spot by the time she'd finished putting on her jacket and gloves, but when she headed back to make her demand a little more clear, Trish met her halfway. "Jess, is this a good idea right now?" she whispered.

"Just let me do this, okay? I'll be fine." A lukewarm reassurance. Even without his mind control, Kilgrave retained a level of unpredictability, and that was on top of the fact that Jessica considered it a chore to deal with him in any situation.

"Are you sure?"

Jessica paused for a long moment, choosing her words carefully. "I just... I need him to realize." I need him to suffer in this new reality, the way I'd been made to suffer in his.

The unspoken words hung in the air. Trish could sense them, but regardless, and with some hesitation, she moved aside. Jessica couldn't meet her sister's eyes as she passed.

Kilgrave sat where she'd left him, his dark brown eyes analyzing her every move. Jessica stopped a foot away.

"I thought you were dying to leave."

He blinked twice, licked his lips. "This is part of your plan, isn't it? I don't trust you."

"For fuck's sake. I'm trying to show you that I'm not lying. I'll drag your ass out the door if I have to."

He searched her face and weighed his options. Jessica mentally gave him three seconds to move, and when he still didn't budge, she grabbed him by the collar of his suit and dragged him to his feet.

"Okay, fine! Fine, just let me— let me go!" he demanded, though his voice carried less hostility than before. This unexpected development had doused his fiery outrage into a bitter smolder. Jessica dropped him and let him catch himself against the wall, where he let out a breathy curse, shoulders bent forward as he held his middle. It took a second for him to recover before he could use his long stride to catch up with her, which he obligingly did, now that he had been given no choice.


	4. Great Day for a Stroll

Because the apartment's sophisticated security system required disabling before anyone could actually leave, Trish met Jessica and Kilgrave at the front door. She carefully covered the pin pad with one hand to keep her code from Kilgrave's prying eyes, but that didn't stop his unwarranted commentary.

"Not bad, Patsy. Knowing you have this installed, it's even more ludicrous to think you were foolish enough to welcome in that officer I sent after you."

Trish turned to stare at Jessica with wide, disbelieving eyes. Oh my god, she mouthed wordlessly, and Jessica, deadpan, replied with an equally silent I know. Kilgrave took no notice.

"Have fun, I guess," said Trish, closing the door behind them.

"Thanks, mom." Jessica impatiently mashed on the elevator's call button. This little trip was already grating her nerves and they hadn't even stepped outside yet. Behind her, Kilgrave fidgeted incessantly, rocking on his heels, causing the leather of his Oxfords to squeak, and it only maddened her further. An eternity passed, or so it felt, before the elevator doors finally opened. She stepped in, and when he followed to stand beside her, she became acutely, uncomfortably aware of him, his mere presence becoming all at once unbearable. There wasn't much Jessica could do but to cut him out of her periphery by letting her dark hair fall over her shoulder, and she concentrated on her own breathing to focus her mind on something, to keep herself from spiraling in this cramped, enclosed space with him, but her skin had already begun to crawl.

"Can't you ever be quiet?" she lashed out when he still hadn't stopped making noises.

Kilgrave was in the midst of buttoning his collar and readjusting his tie, and he sighed. "Look, Jessica, I know you're upset with me for yelling at you—"

"Hah!"

"—and I'm rather upset with you for hitting me. But if you'll just let me leave without any trouble, I promise I won't order anyone to attack you."

"Holy shit, you're unbelievable. I can't wait for the look on your face when we get down there."

That gave him pause. He opened his mouth to retort, but decided against it, and Jessica considered that to be a small success. It was an immense relief for her when they stepped out into the sizable lobby. Trish's doorman stood watch just outside the elevator doors, looking vacant as ever.

"Here you go. Command him." Jessica gestured vaguely at the doorman, who gave her a puzzled look.

Kilgrave considered him for a moment, but then his gaze drifted away. "I'll wait."

"Now you're just in denial that you're in denial. Onto the sidewalk, Kevin."

"Seriously, stop calling me that." His voice had dropped into a growl. "I don't like it. I really, really don't. I don't like that name."

Jessica rounded to face him, shouting, "And I didn't like being raped, but I guess I get to live with that, don't I?!"

The impulsive response surprised both of them, and it earned a few alarmed glances from other residents who'd been on their way either in or out of the lobby. Jessica didn't often resort to such dark sarcasm when referencing that part of her life. Though his response wasn't one she would've preferred— he shoved his hands into the pockets of his pants and looked away with an almost skeptical face— it still felt appropriate to remind her own assailant of what he'd done to her, whether or not he agreed. And regardless of what he did, or what he continued to do, he could never, ever stop her from saying it out loud. Exercising that power over him appeased her, even if only slightly.

"So, Kevin," Jessica stressed the birth name he'd discarded decades prior, "haul your ass. I don't have all day."

Outside, New York City was chilly and damp in the early morning fog, a typical side effect of winter gradually inching its way into spring. Jessica recalled hearing something on the radio about recent cold fronts constantly interrupting the warm ones as she craned her neck to see the skyscrapers around her reach high into the gray. It would be another several weeks of this before things really started to warm, and as someone who preferred this kind of cool air over the heat of summer, that suited her just fine. What she didn't care much for was the moisture that now settled into her hair and made stray strands cling to her cheeks. She tucked as much of the thick locks behind her ears as she could before shoving her hands into the pockets of her jacket. To her left, Kilgrave stood with his lower lip jutting slightly out of a stern face. The biting wind further ruffled his already unkempt hair, and he brought his hands together to rub the cold out of his fingers.

"Well?" Jessica prompted, her weight shifting from one foot to the other. Kilgrave didn't answer, nor did he even look at her, before he stepped onto the busy sidewalk to join the morning foot traffic, and he pushed his way through the throng of people with a purposeful stride. Jessica, familiar with navigating the city's lively crowds, easily kept pace at his heels.

"Hey!" she called to him. "This isn't actually a morning stroll, asshole! Tell someone to stand on one foot or something. I don't care what you do, just get it over with."

He ignored her entirely. Jessica's patience was on its barest thread, and though she didn't exactly want to start a physical confrontation in the middle of all these people, especially when knowing the kind of scene Kilgrave loved to cause when he needed a way out, she wasn't opposed to it if it became a necessity. She was eyeing the back of his suit and deciding whether or not to grab it when Kilgrave suddenly darted from her reach, dodging between pedestrians and nearly knocking several of them over, and he ran to the mouth of an alley between two buildings where a middle-aged man was dropping off bags of rubbish.

"Help me!" Kilgrave cried out, startling the man so much he dropped the bag in his hand. "This woman, she's— she's been following me all day, she's trying to rob me, or worse, or— for God's sake, stop her!"

Jessica rolled her eyes before fixing her expression into something resembling apologetic. The man, clearly bewildered, eyed her as she came to stand beside Kilgrave.

"I'm so sorry about my cousin," she lied, fighting to keep her tone from being too blatantly wry. "He was in a bus accident and now he has this awful memory loss. He keeps forgetting who I am every, like, fifteen minutes. The doctor said it's good to get him outside, but then stuff like this happens." Kilgrave was staring at both her and the stranger in visible disbelief, and Jessica simply patted his arm. "I'm sorry he bothered you."

"No, no, no, no," Kilgrave stammered at the man who'd already begun edging his way back into the crowd. "Don't leave! Call the police! Please!"

But the man was gone, muttering something about wanting no part of it. Kilgrave had once again gone slack-jawed.

Jessica would have smirked had it not been for the residual headache from last night and the craving for whiskey she'd had all morning. The cold wind continued to nip at her cheeks and the tip of her nose. On the street beside them, a taxi blared its horn, reminding her of her own worsening mood. "So, there you have it. No more powers." She half-turned in the direction of Trish's building, hoping he would make things easy on her and follow without a word, but of course things could never be so easy. Kilgrave wasn't going to follow. He stood there on the sidewalk, completely paralyzed.

And his expression made Jessica freeze, too. It was an arrangement of his features that she'd never seen on him before. Not once in the entire time she'd known him, both under his control and beyond it, had she ever caught him looking like this, not even when she'd watched him lay eyes on his own mother for the first time in nearly thirty years. In this moment, as the crowd trickled around and between them, as the world and time continued to move seemingly without him, and with eyes that stared unblinking, unseeing, into the middle distance, Kilgrave looked more than stunned, more than despaired. It was a kind of anguish she'd never thought him capable of.

Then the gears in his head began turning again, and his limbs twitched back to life, and suddenly he was reaching out to the people that passed by, begging them for help, willing for someone, anyone, to pay him enough mind that he might find this all an elaborate hoax. But they only turned their heads from him. He'd begun to claw desperately at the blur of rain coats and suit jackets when Jessica wrenched him away and dragged him out of the sea of pedestrians. She hadn't been moved enough by his broken expression to stand idly by and watch that display unfold. "Will you give it up? Nobody is listening to you!" she snapped at him as he stumbled back toward the alley and away from everyone who paid him no mind.

Kilgrave had never hyperventilated in his life, but he was pretty sure that's what he was doing now as his chest heaved forth more air than he could take in, rattling him down to his bones despite how badly he wanted to maintain any shred of dignity. Under the strain of it his tall frame slumped forward, the world seemed to tilt under his feet, and only after he caught himself on the brick corner of the alleyway did he realize he was trembling. For the second time in one morning he found himself retching, but this time bile did spew forth from his mouth onto the concrete below.

Jessica, surprised and disgusted, recoiled from him. The possibility of a reaction this severe hadn't even occurred to her. In her mind, Kilgrave was a hollow, empty shell of a human. An unfeeling monster— not the man before her who'd been rendered physically sick by his own mind's rejection of the truth. "Jesus Christ. Are you gonna make it?"

Spitting the remaining vomit from his mouth, Kilgrave ran a hand through his hair as if to tidy his own appearance, though it only made him look more haggard. When he answered, he spoke in a voice pitched high, breathless and broken. "I can't..."

Jessica would never know how that sentence was meant to end, or if it even had an ending. Kilgrave took one look at her like a deer in headlights and she realized too late that giving him more space had been the wrong move. Without any further warning, he bolted to sprint down that narrow alley as fast as he could, fighting both the nausea and the hindrance of his clothing. "Goddammit," Jessica exhaled through her teeth. Tired as she was, outrunning him or any other average human was effortless for her, so they weren't even halfway down the alley when she grabbed his collar, skidded to a stop, and hurled him to his back against the cold, wet pavement. He gasped and groaned from the pain, but any pity Jessica might've felt for him moments ago had vanished.

"I wouldn't have to throw you around if you'd stop being so fucking difficult," she reminded, or attempted to remind him, but he paid no heed.

"Help me!" he yelled to the pedestrians strolling past the mouth of the alley, and he no longer needed to feign desperation. His heart hammered against the wall of his chest, and every nerve in his body quivered. The terror from last night, still with every single stab of intensity he'd felt on the docks, had clawed its way back into him.

Similarly, Jessica began to feel the echo of last night's fury come flooding once more beneath her own skin. The sight of Kilgrave lying in the dirt and crying out for help, as if he was the victim and she the tormentor, made her blood boil. She knelt down to him with more restraint than could match her rage, though her expression conveyed plainly how she felt. When he tried to fight her off, she resisted him with ease, and, while her burning eyes held his, she wrapped one hand around the throat she'd always thought was too scrawny for a man of his stature, and she squeezed the soft hollow beneath his jaw just tightly enough to close his airway. The stubble of his beard pricked at her skin.

"Shut up," she hissed just inches from his face. One or two people in the distance stopped briefly to glance into the alley out of curiosity, then promptly moved on. Bystander apathy, it was called. She'd read about it somewhere.

Kilgrave didn't writhe beneath her. His hands clutched her arm, his fingernails dug into the leather of her sleeve, the heels of his shoes scraped against the asphalt when his body reflexively coiled, and his face was still twisted in panic, but he knew better than anyone how pointless it would be to fight against her. Ironic, he thought, that it was this strength of hers he'd once so genuinely adored. But he didn't know if it was his own pride or the ferocity of Jessica's stare that prevented him from tearing his eyes away from hers, even as his lungs tightened and protested.

"Stop screaming, stop running," threatened Jessica. "It only makes you look and sound more pathetic than you already are. It's over. Do you get that?"

Of course, he couldn't answer, not with his voice nor with his head. As the muscles in his face twitched and deepened his grimace, it was all he could do to flex his fingers around her wrist to plead that she let go.

And she almost couldn't. After all the times he'd come to stand within mere feet of her, completely exposed, unprotected, and still he'd looked down on her with that jovial grin, knowing there was nothing she could do to him lest she risk the lives of innocent people, making her feel utterly and miserably powerless in his presence— after all of that, and with the look on his face now, my god, this so felt good. But he was beginning to squirm beneath her, and his eyes bulged even wider when she didn't let go. So Jessica finally relented. She slackened her hold just enough to let him suck in a long, desperate breath, but she didn't release him entirely. Her hand rested atop his neck as a warning and she could feel the movement of his throat underneath her palm as he coughed and swallowed.

"Why won't you just let me leave?" he panted when he could speak, his voice still wild from a hysteria that had only barely been suppressed. "Please, I'm begging you. Let me go. I don't want this anymore, I don't. Please, Jessica."

Her lip curled into a sneer. The coward inside the monster at long last was exposed. "No. Wanna know why? Because you're going to prison, asshole. For life. Probably for five or six life sentences, if we're lucky."

"You think you can have me arrested?" Kilgrave blurted, incredulous. "Have you gone mad? There's no evidence. You don't have anything to—"

"I have everything I need."

And she declared it with such conviction that any further protests of his now fell on a paralyzed tongue. It was then that Jessica's phone buzzed in her back pocket, interrupting the relish she found in the way Kilgrave's gaze had unfocused to stare straight past her into that gray, foggy sky above them. She stood back to her full height, abandoning him there on the hard ground and knowing he was in no state to try another escape. Part of her wondered if he'd ever recover any of that excessive confidence he used to have. Another part of her didn't care.

The calling contact on her phone's screen read "Hogarth", and she eagerly answered.

"You got something?"

"That address you gave me. I visited it first thing this morning," came Hogarth's voice in her usual manner of business.

Jessica's mood immediately perked. That address was for the penthouse where Albert Thompson had been forced by Kilgrave to slave away on amplifiers at a makeshift laboratory, and where he'd left behind the cure for Kilgrave's virus for Jessica to find. It was where she'd watched Albert, maimed and afraid, bleed to death on the floor. And it was where she'd saved the life of the penthouse's only surviving resident, Justin Boden, by knocking him unconscious and securing him inside the broom closet. It was the place that held all her best evidence against Kilgrave. "Yeah?" Jessica pressed. "And you talked to him, right? You talked to Justin?"

"Jessica... I think you should come see this for yourself."


	5. When It Rains, It Pours

Kilgrave stood alone in the foyer of Trish's apartment with eyes that couldn't focus and breath that came up short. Now that he wasn't being led, he didn't know where to go. The walk back to this building had barely even registered in his head beyond the sensation of Jessica's hand clutching his arm as she'd dragged him through a blur of strangers. The skin of his ears still stung from the winter wind.

"I gotta take care of something," came Jessica's voice from behind him as he stood still and cold. "Don't be a dick to Trish." The door slammed shut, leaving his own shaking breath to hang in the silence that followed.

Moments later Trish rounded the corner into his view, and Kilgrave threw a hand out to stop her as he recoiled defensively, crashing into the door behind him. "Don't!" he warned with a hint of hysteria. "Do not come near me. Don't you dare!"

His reaction and the absence of Jessica made Trish pause in shock. Kilgrave stayed backed against the door with wild eyes and a grimace until, after a few tense seconds, Trish took one more step toward him, and it sent him pushing past her to scramble down the hall and hide away in the same bathroom he'd found himself waking up in only an hour before.

While aware of how childish he must have looked, he couldn't yet bear to face anyone. He especially couldn't bear to look into the eyes of Trish Walker, eyes that surely held nothing of pity and everything of satisfaction at his undoing. The bathroom door still swung freely from when Jessica had kicked it in, so Kilgrave pushed the laundry hamper against it to keep it securely shut. And then he braced himself against the door by the palms of his hands, hung his head low, and squeezed his eyes shut. He still couldn't breathe. No matter how many breaths he sucked in, each one felt shallow. It did nothing to stop his lungs from feeling so stiff and empty. His mind raced for a solution but it couldn't settle. It raced, and it raced, and it raced.

Overwhelmed and suffocated, he began to fight his way out of his own clothes. First the jacket, and then the vest, then the tie, each item tossed haphazardly the floor. The cuff links to his shirt were flung into a corner by the towel cabinet, his dress shoes kicked off without care. He meant to stop there but his hands moved on their own. Trembling fingers fumbled with the buttons of his shirt and the belt of his trousers, and away everything went until he stumbled naked to the sink and dry heaved into it. Despite having already given up the contents of his stomach to the sidewalk, he retched with such force that it brought tears to his eyes and made him grip the sink so hard his fingers ached. It embarrassed him that Trish must surely have been able to hear his gagging through the walls. Afterward, when washing his face with water from the faucet wasn't enough, he stepped into the glass shower stall and sank to the floor of it, where he hugged his knees to his chest beneath a stream of scalding water that stung his wounds. Even in the enveloping warmth, his body still shivered.

Kilgrave felt just as he had the day he'd realized his parents were never coming back home. It was a hollow helplessness that turned his bones cold. And now, in a way that protested against every lesson of self-preservation he'd ever taught himself, he wept openly, just the way he had as a child.

The loss of his power wasn't merely the loss of an extravagant lifestyle. To him, it was losing his only means of staying alive and sane. That power was how he'd learned to survive when, as an abandoned ten-year-old, too scared to attempt a life on his own, he'd nearly withered away waiting for his mother and father to return. It kept him from needing. In time, it kept him from wanting. And it was all that put distance between him and the bleak white rooms and cold surfaces of that wretched laboratory of cameras and needles.

He always thought it was his power that had saved him. It was his mercy. Without it, old feelings now resurfaced unbidden, like splinters being pulled through the skin. Feelings of having absolutely nothing and absolutely no one.

The glass walls of the shower stall began to fog over. Kilgrave drew his knees and elbows in tight, making himself as small as he felt, and he sobbed harder than he had in years.

Jessica glared down at the dirty shoes of a stranger who held on to the same metal pole as she did on the subway train. A tension headache lurked behind her temples, and it wasn't until well into the train ride that she realized every muscle in her face, neck, and back had gone completely rigid, and had been that way all morning. She attempted to stop grinding her teeth and glared a bit less severely at the shoes, if only to keep the headache at bay.

This trip on the subway had so far been spent trying not to remember Kilgrave's public breakdown, but images kept appearing in her mind's eye of him purging his dinner onto the sidewalk, and of his panicked face as he'd stared up at her from the ground with her hand around his throat. The thing was, she felt no sympathy for any of it. The memory only disturbed her. But it did so with such magnitude that it made her want to forget the way he'd gone completely blank on the way back to Trish's.

Her efforts to ignore the incident were unsuccessful and she couldn't help but dwell, and the longer she did, the more it made her blood sing with rage over the way he'd acted like the victim, as though he was the one who'd been wronged. As though he had the right to anything better. The thought made Jessica clench the subway pole until its metal warped beneath her fingers, earning a soft gasp from the owner of the shoes she still glowered at, which disappeared from her view when their owner retreated to a different part of the car.

The train line eventually deposited her to the other side of midtown. As she climbed up the station's stairs into the crisp open air of the city, Jessica's back pocket buzzed, and she checked her phone to see a new text from Trish.

Please answer me Jess

Five additional texts, all from Trish and all missed during the train ride, still waited to be opened. Jessica kept her phone out to scroll through them as she headed down the sidewalk.

What happened? Is everything okay?  
Did something happen out there?  
Kilgrave is holed up in my bathroom. What do I do with him?  
Seriously, where are you?  
Jess!

Jessica frowned at her own negligence of Trish, yet couldn't help giving a satisfied huff through her nose at the idea of Kilgrave cowering in the bathroom. She thumbed a quick reply.

His powers don't work on anyone anymore. He freaked out. He's probably still freaking out. Just make sure he doesn't leave. Hogarth has news for me. TTYL

A gust of wind whipped her loose hair about her face, obscuring her view. Jessica pushed the locks behind her ear and glanced up to see that the sky had noticeably darkened in the short time it took her to get here. Gray clouds churned above the skyscrapers, and a subtle change in pressure that made her ears pop meant today was likely to be a rainy day in New York City.

She hoped the news Hogarth promised over the phone would be brighter than the weather. That shark of a lawyer had summoned her to Justin Boden's residence, the penthouse where Jessica hoped to gain sufficient evidence for the eventual court case against Kilgrave. Her boots struck the sidewalk hard with her impatience as her phone buzzed with another text from Trish.

How do I know he hasn't done something to you?

Jessica pursed her lips and hesitated before typing a reply.

I love you. That's how.

Three words she never used, three words that served as a safety phrase to let Trish know she hadn't come under the influence of mind control. Saying it in any form, even for this purpose, still felt awkward to Jessica. Such was the consequence of a life built upon a foundation of emotional distance.

It was only a short walk before the towering building of Justin's home came into view, although when it did, the very sight of it struck Jessica with a dread so potent it froze her on the spot. For one desperate moment she pleaded with any possible higher power that this was a mistake, that she'd simply gone the wrong way and found the wrong skyscraper. But if there was anything that controlled the events around her, it had never been particularly kind. This scorched, smoking stack of a building was definitely Justin's.

The penthouse was gone. Nothing remained in its place but the structural metal beams that poked up from the top of the skyscraper like the charred bones of its skeleton, and a great plume of black smoke rose from it to join the clouds above. The sight fixed Jessica with a horror that made her heart skip and sink even as she forced herself to sprint the rest of the way. The universe was cruel, but this was beyond cruel. She couldn't help but think that, for all her best evidence to go up in flames, someone up there must really hate her. But there was no use in blaming fate. A separate thought from some despicable place deep down inside told her that this was nothing less than what she deserved.

A swarm of fire trucks and police cars waited outside the high rise's entrance with all their lights still blazing. Fire ladders balanced alongside the walls of the building, and two helicopters hovered noisily in the air above. Policemen had the entire area quarantined with yellow hazard tape to bar curious onlookers. Jessica searched the crowd for Hogarth and, once she'd spotted the shark by her distinctively dour appearance, stormed to her.

"What the hell happened?" Jessica demanded over the din of the crowd and choppers.

Hogarth didn't look away from the ruined apex of the building and stated with barely concealed derision, "There was a fire."

"Do not fuck with me right now."

"Nobody knows how it started." Hogarth turned her steely gaze to Jessica. She'd clad herself in all black, as was her usual attire, but the sliver of red across her cheek betrayed the ensemble. It stirred Jessica's memory of finding Hogarth bloodied on the floor of her ex-wife's home, and she glanced down at the older woman's hands. Winter gloves hid any further evidence of the ordeal. "Police told me the top four floors collapsed," Hogarth continued, "and that the fire is still going in some places. There's absolutely nothing left of the penthouse."

"But how the hell could this have even happened? I took care of everything up there. Justin was the only goddamned one left alive."

"Was he under Kilgrave's control when you left?"

"I mean, yeah, but—" Jessica paused and forced herself to breathe. "But I knocked him out. I locked him in the closet, for fuck's sake. He couldn't have done this."

Hogarth leaned the tiniest bit closer and lowered her voice. "You and I both know what it's like under his control. If Justin woke up, he would've found a way out, one way or another."

Jessica flexed her fists and looked away, her lip curled, every muscle in her body taut in protest against the undeniable fact that Hogarth was right. Victims of Kilgrave's mind control always— always— carried out their commands by any means necessary. Justin would have smashed his way through the closet door using his own skull, if that's what it took. Reluctantly, Jessica turned her eyes back to the swirling tower of smoke that rose, lazy and indifferent, from the smoldering ashes of her best hope. She knew Kilgrave was not one to leave behind a single incriminating trace. The fire would have erased all his fingerprints and any concoctions left behind by Albert. Police would eventually figure out that the fire was deliberately started, but it'd be ruled as the act of a madman, not a victim of mind control.

Kilgrave was at his most powerful when this happened. At the time, his commands were no longer limited to a twelve hour window. All Justin would've had to do was wake up and set fire to his own home before Jessica put that needle in Kilgrave's neck.

"I'm sorry we couldn't save him," came the terse farewell from Hogarth as she turned to leave.

But Jessica moved to block her path, growling, "We're not done here. I have some new favors to ask of you, and you still owe me for what you did— for screwing me over and trying to use Kilgrave for your own petty bullshit."

Hogarth averted her eyes and shook her head, her voice falling quiet. "Jessica, I have already paid for that with my own blood. What more do you want from me?"

"I want you to help me get Kilgrave arrested, indicted, and thrown in prison for life."

The unrestrained laugh Hogarth answered with was genuine, and she stepped around Jessica toward her car across the street. "You've finally lost it if you think you can get that man into a court house."

"He won't have a choice," Jessica insisted, keeping pace beside her. "His mind control power is gone. He can't do a damn thing to anyone ever again, and all I need—"

Hogarth raised a finger to interrupt. "Stop there. 'Gone'?"

"Gone, as in he's completely powerless." Jessica could only barely repress the urge to grab Hogarth's arm and force her to pay full attention. "All it took was an antivirus. Now he's about as dangerous as a fly, but just as annoying." Her jaw clenched. "I want him in prison, Hogarth. I want him rotting behind bars for what he did."

"I understand your sentiment, but it's still not that simple. If he really is powerless then that means you can't even demonstrate his involvement with these homicide cases to a judge." Hogarth stopped at the driver's side of her sleek silver Audi and pulled open the door.

Jessica slammed it shut with one hand."You helped make this worse, so help me make it right! Tell me what I need!"

Hogarth's next words were uttered slowly, and with venom. "What do you think this will bring, Jessica? Closure?"

It was all Jessica could do to refrain from putting a dent in this lawyer's fancy car. "Just tell me what I need. Tell me what I need in order to have him found guilty."

"The odds of that happening are almost nonexistent, since most people still don't believe he was anything more than Hope's delusional fabrication." Hogarth gave a relenting sigh. "But you might be able to use witness accounts to convince a jury."

"What, like, the people in that Kilgrave Survivors' Group?" Their stories didn't exactly reflect the kind of damage Jessica was hoping to get him tried for in court.

"Only the victims with truly persuasive accounts, not trivial accusations like 'Kilgrave took my coat'. If you can find a decent number of convincing witnesses who are willing to testify against him on public record, then that might be enough to sway a jury."

"You could testify," urged Jessica.

"Absolutely not."

"Right, because it would mean letting everyone know you made a deal with a mind controlling psychopath to force your wife into signing divorce papers."

"And what about you, Jessica?" asked Hogarth, and it stung like an accusation. "As his primary accuser, shouldn't you tell your story? Whatever it is he did to you, you might as well tell it to a jury."

Birch Street. Higgins Drive. A considerable effort was made to hold Hogarth's scorching stare, but with her head slowly becoming static, Jessica was forced to look away. "I'll call you when I need you." She let Hogarth pass, and she didn't watch as the car sped off into the city.

Jessica spent her trek back to the subway station in a haze. She swore she could feel the ashes of Justin's home lingering in her eyes and nose, reminding her again and again of what had been lost. A prime witness, Kilgrave's fingerprints, the corpse of his father. None of it could be used anymore. And it hadn't even occurred to her until Hogarth mentioned it that Kilgrave's lack of a mind control ability would make him look infinitely more innocent to any judge. Jessica wanted to kick herself for not considering such an obvious angle when she'd pumped him full of the antivirus. Over and over she reminded herself that neutering him of his power had been an absolute necessity, but then she began to question even that when she remembered what Trish had said last night about how uncertain this plan was from the start.

Trish! It wasn't until Jessica reached the descending steps into the station that she remembered to call Trish. Since going underground would only get her a bad signal, she sat there on the sidewalk with her back against a brick wall and, chalking up the quivering in her hands to a craving for alcohol, she phoned her sister.

"Trish, it's gone. All of it. Kilgrave made Justin burn the entire penthouse. Nothing's salvageable."

A long silence filled the line until Trish finally whispered, "What are we gonna do?"

"I don't know. I..." Jessica's fingers rubbed her forehead, tugged through her tangled hair. The chill in the wind didn't feel refreshing anymore. "I need to think. I need to go back to my place." She thought of Luke and how he laid still as death on her bed when she'd left him there. Between confronting Kilgrave, arguing with Hogarth, and seeing the aftermath of the penthouse fire, Jessica was left drained, and she desperately needed to see if Luke had survived the night. "You can deal with Kilgrave, right?"

"No, I can't," Trish gently insisted over the phone. "I have a Trish Talk this afternoon. I can't babysit him all day."

"Just cancel today's show, you've done that before."

"Not after I missed the last one when I was in the hospital. Tabloids are already circulating rumors that I've had a drug relapse."

"Shit." Jessica sighed and thumbed a fray in her jeans. "Okay, I get it. When do you need to be there?"

"Three o'clock."

A quick glance at her phone's screen told Jessica she had a few hours to spare. "I'll be back before you need to leave," she promised. "But I really do need to stop by my place. Don't let that bag of dicks say anything shitty to you while I'm gone."

"I haven't even seen him this whole time. Not that I'm complaining." There was a pause filled with the soft static of breath before Trish continued. "We'll figure this out, Jess."

Jessica didn't answer right away. She stared across the street at a stray black cat that had taken refuge underneath a parked car from the wind. "Yeah," she eventually muttered, but it was hollow, and it was all she could manage before ending the call and descending down the stairs to the subway.


	6. Reality Hits Harder Than a Bus

A local news report confirmed what Jessica had said. Penthouse fire, four floors gone, seven dead, nineteen injured. Trish stared at the words on her phone until the screen faded to black and left her to stare into the eyes of her own despondent reflection.

All their best evidence was gone. The list of the dead and dying had grown even longer. She let her phone clatter to the coffee table and, with both hands cupping her nose and mouth, she sighed through her fingers and fell back against the couch. It was only hours ago that there had been a brief respite for the two sisters when Kilgrave was proven to be powerless. It felt like being able to breathe again. But that feeling was already long gone, replaced by the suffocating weight of this enormous loss.

Trish turned her head to look through the glass doors of her apartment's small terrace. Morning light barely filtered through the accumulating gray clouds that cast the city in duller tones. Resting her cheek against the leather, she watched as faint rays of sun found openings in the cloud cover, peeking through in slivers, only to then fade away moments later.

She'd always had her doubts about the likelihood of Kilgrave's incarceration. Every time they came one step closer to it, something would aggressively shove them two steps further back. But that mattered little in the face of how unmistakably clear the importance of this was to Jessica, despite how scarcely she wore her heart on her sleeve. Not that she really needed to. To Trish, Jessica's heart was woven in vibrant threads throughout every stitch of her clothes, especially when she knew her sister hoped no one was looking.

And so Trish resolved to press onward, one way or another. For Jessica.

For all of them.

If only she didn't feel so utterly and completely useless. After all, when had a simple radio talk show host ever saved anyone from anything?

Trish forced herself to her feet. She knew too well the inescapable pit this thought would lead to if entertained even in the slightest. Dwelling in darker corners of the mind was her sister's forte, not her own. So she gathered herself and moved to sit at the kitchen's island counter, where she spread out a folder of papers and reviewed the topics for her afternoon Trish Talk. Staying busy as a way to prevent herself from dwelling was a trick of survival Trish had taught herself a long time ago. It was the only way to keep detrimental thoughts from spiraling.

And in the bathroom, now that the shower's warm water finally put a stop to the chills that had racked him all morning, Kilgrave was beginning to sober from his own maddening spiral.

The waves of nausea had gradually dissipated, though they left his diaphragm aching. The sobbing had eventually quieted as well. He still sat on the floor of the stall, only he now no longer curled into himself. Instead he leaned, limp and spent, against one of its glass walls, and he stared blankly through the cascading water with his tears run dry. Curling up and crying hadn't helped him when he was a child. There was no reason for him to think that would have changed, even after so many years.

The stubborn part of him tried to maintain that this could all be an elaborate setup by little miss conniving Jessica Jones, but his denial was at last being hushed by rationality. And logic told him he couldn't hide away forever. The last time he felt this helpless was when he'd waited through a number of lonely and terrifying weeks for his mother and father to return from wherever they ran so frantically out the front door to. This time, there wasn't even anything to wait for— so why was he even sitting here, he finally wondered.

Jessica was right. You aren't ten anymore. He was damn near forty, only three years short of it. And, even if he had nothing else in the world, the one thing he did still have was his arsenal of wits. Or at least, he hoped he still had it. He'd gotten out of worse than this before.

Well, no, he hadn't, but he'd like to think he could.

And so Kilgrave got back to his feet and, knowing this was one of those now or never moments, decided he'd had quite enough of humiliating himself in front of Jessica Jones.

Water dripped from him to form little puddles on the floor as he moved around the steamy room. The puncture wound in his shoulder, courtesy of his mother, and the bullet laceration in his arm, courtesy of Trish, both throbbed from the heat of the shower. Of the two, the gunshot gash stung much more painfully. Kilgrave was still cross with Jessica for reopening that one a few days prior when she'd viciously dug her thumb into his arm. He spent a minute rummaging through Trish's cabinets and drawers while wrapped in one of her fluffy towels until he came across a first aid kit. Despite being completely inept at patching up any sort of injury, he managed to replace the old bandages well enough, wincing and hissing through his teeth all the while.

It occurred to him that he'd taken for granted the ability to stroll into any hospital and simply demand attention for whatever physical damage Jessica had most recently done to him. It was with a sinking feeling that Kilgrave understood just how often similar realizations would hit him in the coming days, and he had to stop and grip the edge of the counter with both hands to keep the panic from taking him again.

After that, he redressed in a haze, picking his clothes one by one off the floor from where he'd scattered them. On went the trousers, the shirt, the belt, the tie, the vest and the shoes; he dressed as if nothing out of his ordinary had happened. It wasn't until he nearly finished that he noticed one of his cuff links had gone missing. Kilgrave cursed himself for having so carelessly tossed them away earlier, unforgiving of his own outburst, and he searched every inch of the floor on his hands and knees, though it eventually had to be declared lost forever. Having nothing to clasp his French cuffs with, and now sporting wet spots at his knees and elbows, he was forced to sourly roll the sleeves of his dress shirt to his forearms.

As an afterthought, he rummaged through Trish's mirror cabinet, and within it he found a small canister of hair mousse. The foam smelled faintly of cucumber when he sprayed it into his hand, a fragrance less masculine than he would've liked, but since he didn't want to look like he'd been experiencing a breakdown for the last hour, he spread the foam through the locks of his hair to shape it into its usual style.

And Trish hadn't realized how much she was hoping Kilgrave would stay in there forever until the sound of the bathroom door suddenly swinging open down the hall made her instinctively bristle.

It was also only just occurring to her that she'd not once been alone in a room with this man.

The last time she saw him, he was in a fit of hysterics, akin to a cornered animal ready to either lash out or bolt. He'd left calmly with Jessica and come back having completely lost it. Trish knew she'd have no difficulty restraining him if necessary, but wrestling a wild Kilgrave to the floor wasn't exactly how she wanted to spend her afternoon. So she kept her eyes trained on her work notes, pen pinched tightly between her fingers, and she steeled herself against the sound of his approaching footsteps.

But he only flung his suit jacket over the back of a chair next to her and then sauntered off to stare out the terrace doors.

The total lack of any fuss from him left Trish puzzled, and she hesitated before turning her head just enough to glance across the room. Kilgrave stood before the glass doors with his back to her, both hands shoved deep into his pockets, his weight leaned onto one leg. It was certainly an improvement over the way he'd cowered from her this morning. Trish softly tapped her pen against paper, deliberating.

"Looks like you finally accepted it," she spoke after a lengthy silence.

Kilgrave didn't respond right away. When he did, his voice was less steady than he'd hoped. "I had no choice, did I?" He swallowed and added quietly, "Where's Jessica?"

"Taking care of some things. She'll be back in a few hours."

"Right. Yes. Off securing my arrest, I presume? She told me all about it outside." He hadn't forgotten the way her hand felt around his throat when she'd pinned him in that alley, and he shifted uncomfortably.

Trish watched him with indifference. There was nothing left to say, then. She turned back to her notes.

The brave face Kilgrave wanted to put on was already beginning to falter. The sight of the sprawling city beyond Trish's terrace quite painfully reminded him of just how unreachable everything out there had become in just a single night. It was like he'd been ripped out of the world and stuffed into this little room to rot at a standstill. Like the shock prison that had been made just for him. Only this time, there was no escape. There was no one to manipulate, no loophole, no outlying factor, and certainly no pity to be found here.

Brave face, he told himself.

"Suppose that means it's just you and me, then," announced Kilgrave with an exuberance more akin to his usual kind. He spun to face Trish. "We haven't had time to bond yet, I don't think."

When she outright ignored him, he crossed the room in just a few lengthy strides and circled around the kitchen's island counter until he stood directly across it from her.

"I took the liberty," he crooned in a voice that was anything but amiable, "of using a first aid kit I found in there. You know, for my gunshot wound." Kilgrave purposely enunciated those last two words since it was Trish who'd pulled the trigger. "You don't mind, I'm sure."

Tense and distracted from her writing, a "c" became an "e" in Trish's notes. She struck a hard line over the word with her pen.

Even if Kilgrave was all bark and no bite without his power, this was still the man who'd very nearly forced Trish into suicide. He was the man who'd made her desire death with such a desperation that the memory of it still horrified her. He was the man who'd successfully forced his own mother into suicide without batting an eye. Trish had seen the emotional vacancy on his face as he watched his mother's gruesome demise, and it was one of the most chilling things she'd ever witnessed in her life.

Talking to him one-on-one after all of that wasn't exactly something she'd mentally prepared for. So she kept her eyes fixed on the work in front of her, refusing to look up at him.

"It wasn't yours to take," Trish answered in a clipped tone. She couldn't pinpoint which manner of this man was worse, victimized or patronizing. "And you don't get to decide whether or not I mind."

"I suppose that's the problem now, isn't it? Nothing I say matters anymore." When silence followed, Kilgrave pressed on. "You know, I might as well go ahead and say it. I sometimes wonder why you didn't put that bullet in my head instead of my arm. You can't possibly be that bad of a shot, which means you intentionally missed."

"Jessica needed you alive."

"Oh, but you knew what I'd do next, and you knew it'd only take a few words. If you had just one more bullet left in that gun, it would've gone into your head. In fact, I could've had you do any number of things when that glass came down. But you missed. You didn't have it in you." Another long silence passed, and in a low voice he added, "Ever wonder how much of this you could've prevented if only you hadn't missed?"

Trish's fingers flexed around the pen in her hand. Mind control may have been Kilgrave's super power, but manipulation seemed to be his raw talent. It was becoming more and more apparent why Jessica didn't want anyone to risk speaking to him.

But Trish wasn't one to allow her actions or decisions to be challenged in such an accusatory way. She finally lifted her eyes to meet his cold, inquisitive stare, and was almost repelled by the way he leaned across the counter top on his elbows to shrink the gap between them. Even the excessive formality of his clothes felt oppressive as she sat there in her simple jeans and tank top.

"Are you actually trying to make me feel guilty for everything you've caused?" Trish demanded.

"I'm saying the blame can't be all mine," insisted Kilgrave with a raise of his brows. "Especially when everything I've done has been in the interest of my own safety, considering you lot threw me into a shock therapy prison and Jessica's been wanting to kill me up to last night. I'll admit to some rather rash decisions, but you all kept pushing me, and you— well, you couldn't even stop me when you had the chance. You're as much at fault for all this chaos as I am, quite frankly."

The confidence of this declaration was what finally brought a transparency to the nature of Kilgrave. It was something Trish had always suspected from the way Jessica would describe him, but now, with his big, brown, innocent eyes searching hers, she understood everything. She leaned against her own elbows on the counter, resolutely met his gaze, and spoke her next words like a warning.

"You've obviously found a way to manipulate Jessica with these guilt trips. She already feels responsible for all the damage in her own life; tell her something else is her fault, she'll most likely believe you. But that won't work with me. Jessica thinks of herself as a monster, but I've known real monsters. And you're one of them. All of this is your fault."

Kilgrave lifted one incredulous brow as she spoke, but it wasn't until she called him a monster that he broke his stare, straightening away from her and rolling his eyes. "Oh, spare me that bullshit," he spat. "You're just like Jessica. Perfect childhood, perfect family, perfect home, yet you pretend like you've somehow seen the real horrors of humanity, and you judge me as a monster based on nothing but your own pathetic preconceived notions."

Trish's chest tightened along with the grip on her pen. "You have no idea what I've been through."

"Patsy Walker, highest paid child star in television history!" Kilgrave gestured theatrically at an imaginary headline in the air. "Money, fame, a world of adoring fans! What more could she possibly want?!"

"I didn't want any of it!" Trish blurted out, and she could feel the rest of it welling up inside her.

"Oh, did the pressure of stardom become too much for little ol' Patsy?" The mock sympathy in Kilgrave's voice didn't match his livid face. "My parents raised me under a scalpel and then left me to die all on my own. You couldn't even begin to imagine that kind of torture. If I'm anything, then I'm the product of their monstrosity."

"My mother used me!" Trish screamed at him, cutting him off, stunning him, as she pushed away from the counter to stand and sent the chair clattering to the floor behind her. The rest came spilling from her mouth like an open valve. "I was a child, and she used me to get that fame. To get herself rich! You say I had a perfect childhood? Just because I grew up in a big house with expensive clothes? My mother traded my entire childhood away to the industry so we could have those things. And if I didn't do it exactly the way she wanted— if I didn't starve myself to stay ten pounds underweight for the cameras, or hand my body over to the men directing those movies so they'd give me a leading role— she would beat me and cover the bruises with makeup and scarves!"

This personal insight into her life wasn't meant for someone like Kilgrave. He had no right to it, and she had no obligation to tell him. She didn't want to compete with him for worst childhood. But the way he incessantly used his own as an excuse for his destructive actions simply infuriated her to a degree she hadn't felt in a long time. "What kind of person does that to their child," Trish continued. "I wasn't my mother's daughter, I was her ticket to fame!"

Yet Kilgrave was in no mood for empathy. A deep scowl had long replaced his shock, and he stormed around the counter to Trish. "What could possibly be your point?" he shouted down at her, though she didn't flinch. "You got a few slaps from mum, and that qualifies you to judge me for the way I've had to survive because, what, you felt unloved a few times, too? Your mother turned you into a television personality, my parents made me their lab rat!"

The fury accompanying those last words made her wince, and only then did Trish realize she now clenched the pen in her hand as if it were a weapon to be used. She fought to regain control of the confrontation. "I was exploited and abused," she explained carefully, "but I am not defined by any of it. Everything I do is in spite of what was done to me, not because of it."

Breath, hard and heavy, exhaled from Kilgrave's nose. "Look at you, then. So high and mighty above the rest of us."

"Everything you've done has been your choice," Trish pressed on, certain he'd never been challenged like this once in his entire life. "No one ever forced you to speak the words that would get people killed, but you did it anyway."

"I protect myself the only way I know how."

"All you do is ruin lives, and you've never bothered to try a different way!"

"Everyone that I've ever affected has deserved it," growled Kilgrave.

And for a moment Trish was speechless. She took a step back from him, suddenly needing the room, and after a beat she whispered, "How can you say something like that?"

"You'd never believe what I've seen in people," he said through gritted teeth. "Mind control's a very handy thing, and do you know what it's especially good for? Rooting out the truth. There's nothing that holds people back when I ask them their genuine thoughts," the past tense of his lost power hadn't sunk in yet, "not guilt, not shame, not a damn thing. And if there's anything I've learned in thirty years of finding the shit people hide from the world, it's that they deserve whatever comes to them." After a tense pause he quickly added, "Especially when all I'm doing is protecting myself."

Trish shook her head, appalled. "It doesn't matter what you think of people. It's not up to you to decide what anyone deserves."

"Then who's it up to?" Kilgrave shouted desperately. "You want me to go to prison so badly, don't you? But who decides that in the end? What gives a court judge the right? Years of bloody law school? Surely you must realize most of those bastards are far more corrupt than I've ever been!"

"You're only saying that so you don't have to take responsibility for what you've done," muttered Trish. She was feeling weary from these mental gymnastics. "You even blame your parents for the things you do, as if they made you that way."

"Because I was made," Kilgrave screamed out, and he clutched at his own chest with one hand. "They forced a power onto me and then abandoned me with it. Why shouldn't I have used it to make my life easier? Bad shit happens to people whether or not I'm the one doing it, what bloody difference does it make?!" In his rage he advanced on Trish to bellow into her face, "Why should anyone else fucking matter when there was no one for me?!"

A trained instinct in Trish nearly had her burying the pen in her hand deep into Kilgrave's neck when he got too close and too loud. It surprised her, and scared her, that someone as physically unimposing as him could strain her nerves to such an extent that it triggered all her months of self defense training. Only barely did she repress the reflex. Still, the pen in her fist was raised, her every muscle drawn taut like a bow.

Kilgrave noticed. He coldly regarded the improvised weapon before staring down at her. A malicious contempt in his eyes dared her to do what he very well knew she'd later regret. They both stood rigid, neither yielding, until finally, Kilgrave turned away.

This was her home. Trish refused to let him dominate it. "You could've lived any other way, but you took your grief out on every person around you. You couldn't stand anyone living with the love you missed out on, so you made sure they suffered."

"Enough," warned Kilgrave over his shoulder. He'd gone to stand by the far wall, facing away from her as he cradled his face in one hand.

"And stop using guilt to manipulate Jessica," added Trish in a more scathing tone. "I mean it."

"Enough."

They then both dropped into an uneasy silence, one that was disturbed only by the sound of Kilgrave's heavy, agitated breathing, and Trish struggled to regain herself. She worked the tension out of her right hand by flexing the fingers and massaging her palm. Letting someone like him upset her this severely was unacceptable. To do so was to give back to him all the control he should've lost. She wanted to expect better of herself than that.

Trish grabbed her chair from where it had fallen to the floor, set it upright, and sat back down to continue her notes as if the interruption hadn't even occurred. For one last satisfying jab, she softly commented into the silence, "You really aren't much without your power."

Neither spoke after that. Pen scratched against paper. Kilgrave remained by the wall. The longer he stayed there, so long as he said nothing, the easier Trish found it to ignore him.

She'd nearly pushed the conflict from her mind when his low voice broke through her thoughts.

"Do you detest me, Patsy?" Kilgrave murmured without turning.

Trish stilled. "Don't call me that."

"If I have to go by 'Kevin', then it's only fair that I get to call you 'Patsy'."

"I don't need to call you anything."

"You still haven't answered my question. Because if you do detest me, then I'm genuinely curious about something else."

The genuine curiosity of someone like Kilgrave was not something to be trifled with— in fact, it was downright dangerous, and Trish knew it. So she refused him the satisfaction of an answer and ignored him the very best she could without taping his mouth shut, although she'd soon wish she had done just that.

"It's only because I want to know what it felt like," Kilgrave continued in perfectly cruel sincerity, "when you were mine last night."

In an instant the room turned cold. Kiss me. Mean it. That had been his command for her on the docks last night, during that terrifying moment when Trish thought Jessica was under his control once more. He'd uttered the words, and she'd obeyed, down to the very letter. She still remembered the way his warm mouth felt against hers in the brisk night air. She remembered how, when he told her to mean it, it made her wanthim. Every loathsome thought toward him had disappeared from her mind in that moment, and she'd needed him, his attention and his affection, more than anything. She remembered seeing the distress it caused Jessica to watch, though her sister no longer mattered to Trish in those brutal minutes. Both her body and her head had utterly, utterly betrayed her heart. The feeling now disgusted her with such intensity that it seemed to squeeze the very air from her lungs.

So absorbed was Trish by the dreadful memory that she didn't notice Kilgrave had stepped closer, and suddenly he was right in her ear, whispering viciously, "Tell me what it was like to desire me after all that hatred."

Nothing pulled her reflexes up short this time, and Trish didn't even need to look at him to catch him in the mouth with the back of her closed fist. But his reaction surprised her. Even as Kilgrave stumbled away with blood washing over his tongue, his groan of pain gradually softened into giddy laughter.

"That's it?" he managed to choke out. His fingers pressed against his bottom lip and he winced from the gash cut into it by his teeth, but still he chuckled. "Jessica's hit me ten times harder than that. You're really not much compared to her, are you?"

Trish hated herself for giving him the chance to say something that stung her so precisely.

Jessica stuck her arm through the gaping, windowless space in her apartment's door and unlocked the latch from the other side. The most recent Alias Investigations glass panel that had fallen victim to the chaos surrounding her was still strewn in shards across the floor. She didn't bother to lock the door behind her this time. What would be the point, she thought while glaring at the damage her apartment sustained during Simpson's last shit fit, in trying to keep people out when they only ever did what they wanted, anyway? She might as well break the latch and let the door swing freely… but she wasn't going to. Somehow, being able to close it at all gave her that little sliver of seclusion she often craved. It was almost satisfying.

Almost.

But she hadn't come here to assess the disaster. Everything she cared about was in her bedroom, and even as she hurried toward it, she found herself expecting the very worst.

Then she found her bedroom empty.

The very worst would've been to find Luke's corpse lying atop her bed, so it came as a relief to find the room absent of him at all. But even the fact that he'd survived the night couldn't prevent the hollow feeling his absence left behind in her. Jessica let her jacket fall to the floor as her eyes reluctantly swept the rest of the room. The bedside window had been opened. On the bed was a note written on paper she recognized from the crumpled sticky pad she kept in her desk, and she glanced over it while tossing her gloves aside.

The swelling went down. He recovered. No lasting damage as far as I could tell, but he left when I wasn't looking. I'm sorry. I hope you both find what you need. — Claire

Jessica brushed the note aside and crawled onto her bed where he'd slept, her healing ribs aching with the movement. She fell into her own pillow and inhaled the scent of him. She thought of the times they'd laid in bed beside one another, and of how she hadn't appreciated those moments enough when she'd had them. She hated herself for being in his life. She wanted to apologize to him properly, even though she knew, given the chance, she'd never be able to say the right words.

But Luke was alive. Alive, and out there somewhere. She hadn't been the death of him. Silent, grateful tears stained her pillowcase. She could forget about the fire for now. She could forget about the madman in her sister's home.

Her relief over Luke's survival soon gave way to exhaustion, and the noonday traffic outside her apartment became the usual lullaby that sent her into a desperately needed slumber.

Having solidified himself as a force still to be reckoned with, and with his mouthful of blood now washed down the drain of the bathroom sink, Kilgrave held his chin a bit higher as he roamed Trish's kitchen and browsed the contents of her neatly organized pantry, no more mindful of her than he would've been if he'd mind controlled his way in here.

Trish made the barest attempt to hide her irritation with his lifted spirits. She eyed him from where she still sat at the island counter, chin propped up in her hand and long blonde hair spilling over her shoulder, her patience wearing thin.

"Go sit down somewhere," Trish snapped at him when she'd finally had enough.

Kilgrave held up a bag of chips he'd snagged from the pantry and made a face at the printed words. "Himalayan salted kale chips," he read aloud, cringing through the syllables. "Don't you have anything in here with some real flavor?"

The only answer was the sound of Trish's pen tapping aggressively against her notebook. She'd long given up on restraining him in any way that wasn't physical, already feeling as if she'd given him some sort of victory when she slugged him. And turning a blind eye was no longer an option now that he'd contented himself with rummaging through her kitchen.

Instead, she challenged him on an idle curiosity that had pestered her for quite some time.

"Did you seriously think no one would ever stop you?" Trish calmly probed, straightening in her seat.

Kilgrave tossed the bag of chips onto the counter without looking at her. "Eh, sorry?"

"All this damage you've been causing. The murders, the suicides— you really thought no one would stop you?"

This time, Kilgrave said nothing. He only rolled his eyes before opening the fridge and peering inside.

"Especially with all the other phenomena happening lately," he heard her continue, "and that group of people who've been preventing disasters, like the invasion that happened here a few years ago, and the one in Sokovia." The fridge suddenly snapped shut, and Kilgrave found Trish leaning against it and glaring up at him. "Other gifted people like Jess, who—"

"Other heroes?" Kilgrave clarified for her, derision coating his tongue as he sidestepped her to the overhead cabinets. "Don't be daft. They don't give half a shit about people like me. If aliens come raining down from a hole in the sky, sure, they'll hop right to it. And they'll bask in the limelight afterwards, soaking up all the praise they can before they slide back into obscurity." He frowned, remembering how quickly they'd appeared and then disappeared after the Battle of New York. Of course, he hadn't been here for that— he'd only seen the news on a telly in Florence.

Trish, on the other hand, remembered that day in much more vivid detail. The moment she clung to most out of all the panic and chaos was when she watched Jessica save a few lives from a collapsing building, though Jess would later deny that she'd done anything worthy of praise, saying "Fourth of July Guy would've gotten around to them sooner or later."

Kilgrave wasn't finished yet. "But would they drop everything for little ol' me? Not a chance." He'd opened a cabinet and was eyeing the food inside, until Trish came and slammed that one shut, too. So he turned his scowl and his full attention to her. "And do you know how I know that? Hope's court case generated plenty of publicity, and the New York City media have been relentlessly fussing over me these last few weeks. 'Mind control maniac Kilgrave on the loose, whatever will we do?!'"

Trish turned away, shaking her head.

"And has anyone come running to save the day?" Kilgrave went on. "Absolutely not. That man with the iron suit, Tony Stark— he even lives here, in his ivory tower with the big neon sign, and he's not so much as lifted a finger. Your heroes are just as self-serving as I am, Patsy."

"Somebody would've eventually stopped you," Trish persisted, despite the truth in his words. Truly no one had come to help. "If not Jessica, then someone, somewhere—"

"My God, you are a naive one, aren't you? Too optimistic for your own good." Kilgrave folded his arms over his chest and leaned against the counter. "There are people like me all over the world. Perhaps they aren't as gifted as I am— was," he bitterly corrected himself, "but they're doing the same kinds of things I do, and no one ever stops them. Hell, my own parents and the other scientists like them were experimenting on children! Fat lot of good any so-called 'heroes' did about that."

Trish turned to face him again and gave an exaggerated shrug. "So here you are then, completely powerless and with no fallback plan for it, all because you thought no one would ever care enough to stop you."

Now it was Kilgrave who looked away, muttering, "I never said I didn't have a plan."

"So, do you?"

Kilgrave opened another cabinet and squinted at the contents.

Trish cocked her head, feeling a twinge of satisfaction. "For someone who's usually so thorough, it's amazing you never planned for the worst contingency."

"I didn't think my power was something that could be taken away," Kilgrave confessed quietly. "Didn't even know it was a virus in me. Thought it was something that just… sort of… happened."

Trish reached up to slam the cabinet door shut in his face a second time. Kilgrave flinched back from the sound.

"Stop being nosy," she demanded.

"I'm starving," he growled back, entirely unwilling to admit to her that he'd lost what little was in his stomach to the sidewalk that morning.

"You don't get to make yourself at home here," Trish insisted. "There may not be any bars on the windows, but you're meant to be our prisoner."

Kilgrave vaguely considered nabbing the bag of chips on the counter just to spite her, then decided against the flavor of kale. "Even in prison they still feed their prisoners," he grumbled before finally retreating from the kitchen empty-handed.

Placated, Trish chose her next words carefully, and then offered the only advice she was willing to give. "Then maybe you should turn yourself in to the police."

Kilgrave stared at her, incredulous, as he made himself comfortable on her couch. "You've got to be joking."

"Not at all."

"It's not a very funny joke."

"I'm completely serious." Trish padded on her bare feet to the couch and stood over him where he lounged, a move he found particularly annoying. "Even if you somehow got away from us," she made sure to stress the unlikelihood of it, "you obviously have nowhere to go."

Kilgrave made a face somewhere between a grimace and a pout.

"But if you plead guilty and go to prison, you'll still have all your basic needs. You'll have food and water, and shelter. A bed to sleep on." Trish's coaxing was only lukewarm. In truth, it was Jessica's peace of mind that she cared about, not Kilgrave's comfort. It would be an enormous burden lifted if she could convince him to throw himself at the mercy of the court.

"I can have all of that without prison, thanks," sighed Kilgrave.

"Can you? How, exactly?" Trish attempted to make eye contact with him, but he refused. "Do you have any money? Have you ever even needed it?"

Kilgrave had more money in his metaphorical pocket than he would ever need in a lifetime. There was an account under a false name at Bank of America holding a reserve of hundreds of thousands of dollars, money he'd accumulated and deposited during his time spent in this country. It was his safety net, so to speak.

The only problem it presented was that every method of access to it was traceable. He'd never linked the account to a credit card, or an ATM card, or even a cheque book, since each of those could be traced directly back to him, regardless of his alias. The advent of online banking had proven traceable as well, so he'd forgone that, too. Being tracked by any means was the number one thing he'd avoided his entire life. Taking the necessary precautions against it meant he'd only ever withdrawn money by visiting the bank in person and commanding the teller to hand over a sum of his money. In rare cases, such as the security teams he'd hired to protect him from Jessica, he would command that the money be wired directly from his account to that of the company's, usually with a little extra incentive for no questions asked on the company's part.

In other words, without his power of persuasion, he couldn't access his own money without proof of identification— which he didn't have. Considering the amount of fake accounts he'd opened, including the American one, an account in the UK, and a few more across Europe, he hadn't exactly bothered with maintaining a separate ID for each alias. The hassle of it, which, for him, would've proven minimal, still never seemed worth it, especially with how often governments liked to update their identification card templates to ensure legitimacy.

Kilgrave was realizing he had no money, save for the meager $1.2k in hundred dollar paper bills currently nestled inside the wallet he kept in the breast pocket of his suit jacket.

"I have enough for now," he finally managed in a weak voice.

"And what about when you run out of it?" There was no compassion, no mercy from Trish. "What are you gonna do, get a job? Can you even do that? Do you have a state ID, or a driver's license? A passport? Do you even have proof of citizenship?"

A lump had risen in his throat. He tried to swallow it, and failed. "No."

"I bet you don't have a birth certificate, either. Jesus, I mean, do you even have a Social Security number? Or the UK equivalent, what is it— a National Insurance number?"

There was no reply this time. Kilgrave only stared away from her.

Trish's voice softened. "Is there any proof you actually exist?"

Still no answer.

"You should do yourself a favor. Turn yourself in, plead guilty. You've got nothing out here."

Kilgrave thought he'd gotten all the panic out of his system that morning, but the hammering of his heart told him otherwise, and he began to feel the same sense of suffocation he'd felt in the bathroom. A small yet vain part of him worried how he must look to Trish as he began to fall apart right in front of her, but she only muttered something about needing to shower before her radio show. She left the room, and his shoulders quaked with the tremors of silent sobs that he suppressed by clamping both hands tightly to his mouth, because to let them out would mean he was crumbling once more.


End file.
